Hiring Explosion on Horizon for Small Businesses?

As we are all too painfully aware, most of the economic news we have been hearing recently has been unrelentingly negative. This is especially true of the unemployment data that seems to get reported on unceasingly. Despite all this doom and gloom, data was released in the past few weeks that is fairly positive.

A recent study found that more than 40% of small businesses plan to hire in the next six months. The positions that are going to be filled are predominately sales and marketing roles. In fact, nearly 50% of the small business owners who plan on hiring said that they were going to be expanding their sales and marketing staffs.

Of course, that also means that 60% are not hiring. The Pepperdine Private Capital Markets Project’s fall 2011 survey–focused on more than 7,500 businesses with revenues of less than $5 million–provides quite an interesting insight into what issues are hindering hiring and expansion. The survey revealed that 35% of respondents feel “increased access to capital” would be the most likely catalyst to job creation among small businesses.

Although proposed tax incentives were considered positive by 23% of those surveyed, access to additional capital was by far the biggest impediment to growth. As we at Generational Equity have mentioned before, this is one of the most common complaints we hear from business owners that we meet with weekly at our M&A conferences.

But, again, the really good news from the survey is the substantial number of small business owners that are planning to hire in the ensuing months. Since the vast majority of U.S. companies have revenue below $5 million, assuming that 40% of these smaller firms do hire, we may finally see an improvement in our employment numbers. The biggest drag on the economy right now is unemployment keeping consumption low. If 40% of small businesses do hire employees, this will eventually stimulate economic growth.

As a small business owner, what are your hiring plans for the next six months? Are you also in need of capital for expansion and are having trouble obtaining it?

About Carl Doerksen

The Private Business Owner – A Generational Equity Blog

The Private Business Owner is an online publication sponsored by Generational Equity. PBO aims to provide useful tips and information that will improve both the lives and businesses of entrepreneurs, as well as provide valuable insight into the company exit process through bi-weekly M&A Digests.